It was great to catch up with Graham Meiklejohn of TransPennine Express today, our first session since the company had moved in to government control. My key concern was train reliability and Graham was able to assure me that the Recovery Plan is now essentially delivered. Reliability levels on all services, but specifically on the Newcastle – Berwick is now at pre-covid levels. Nevertheless, noting that our service is less frequent than hourly, we did discuss arrangements for stranded passengers if a TPE service, such as Morpeth’s 09:36 to Edinburgh, is cancelled. The answer is that since there is no other TPE service within an hour, TPE will arrange ticket acceptance on other operator’s services, or alternatively road transport. However, getting hold of TPE, particularly if Morpeth’s ticket office is unstaffed, is quite a challenge.
Next up was getting TPE trains to serve additional stations such as Cramlington, along with my aspiration that the Edinburgh – Newcastle service be re-connected to the Newcastle – Liverpool service, as originally promised, both by TPE and DfT, for December 2019. Re-instating these through trains to Liverpool, apparently, is significantly more challenging, but SENRUG will continue to campaign on this front.
